Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

Autistic Hiker:A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

But it's better to model things without a universal "now" in some cases, and instead to let "now" be an expanding sphere (expanding at the speed of light, of course). Which is clearly what the author had in mind, as opposed to being a careless and easily confused person.

So, I only watched like half of the first episode of "Revolution", but, the explanation in there he gives about "We'd all be fine, but, power grids and everything would be fried" sounds like it would be a semi-plausible explanation of the phenomena on the show.

I May Be Crazy But...:Autistic Hiker: A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

But it's better to model things without a universal "now" in some cases, and instead to let "now" be an expanding sphere (expanding at the speed of light, of course). Which is clearly what the author had in mind, as opposed to being a careless and easily confused person.

Perducci:Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

In recent years C-14 dating has had to be recalibrated due to fluctuations in levels of carbon 14; older dates are wildly inaccurate. To use one example, the original dating for Clovis artifacts was about 2000 years off. Because scientists aren't retarded, they simply (well, not so simply, it was probably a colossal pain in the ass) compared C-14 dating to other dating methods and eventually made it an accurate dating tool, rather than throwing up their hands and saying God just doesn't want us to know stuff. Not that that would satisfy a creationist, I suppose, but nothing will, so fark 'em. The problem for serious people is that it is often unclear whether a carbon 14 date is calibrated, so a lot of archaeological papers contain errors.

Autistic Hiker:A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

If it's 1000 years old and 6000 light years away, we wouldn't be able to see it for another 5000 years.

PhiloeBedoe:That would explain all those 8th century Illuminations of people walking backwards with their thumbs out...

[/snark] Could be if it occurred near the summer equinox. If I read TFA correctly, it was a line-of sight event. So if it hit Japan and only lasted 2 seconds, it could have also hit Europe at the same time only from about May-July. During the rest of the year Europe would be 'over the horizon' from Japan. You can play with a daylight map to see what I mean. Maybe Phil has additional insight.

Perducci:Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

Still doesn't explain the stars and galaxies we can detect many, many millions of light years away.

/They would do so much better if they concentrated on "God made all this using the tools He created when he created the Universe"//still unexplained: how everyone can be descended from two people, and then later six people

Perducci:Just wait for Creationists to use this as an argument against carbon dating.

"See! All it takes is a burst of radiation from space (sent by the One and Only Lord Almighty His Infinite Wonderfulness) to completely mess up the amount of carbon in old stuff! The earth really is 6,000 years old. Take that, science!"

Wouldn't this mess things up in the opposite direction, though? If the amount of Carbon-14 suddenly increased 1200 years ago, this would imply that anything dated to be older than that would actually be much older than the test indicated.

What I find interesting about this finding is that gamma-ray bursts have for some time been a classic life-ending disaster scenario: the sort of thing that causes massive extinctions and ends nearly all life on Earth (or, depending on who you ask, potentially all of it). This hypothesis, if true, would mean that we got smacked at essentially point-blank range by one, but nothing much happened. Either that was one weak ass-gamma burst, or they aren't actually the massive threat once believed.

hdhale:/They would do so much better if they concentrated on "God made all this using the tools He created when he created the Universe"//still unexplained: how everyone can be descended from two people, and then later six people

firemanbuck:Autistic Hiker: A nearby exploding star, or supernova, is almost certainly not the culprit. To generate the energy needed to create the carbon and beryllium seen, it would have to have been less than 1000 light years away. That would've made it so bright it would've been visible in daylight! Also, no 1200-year-old supernova remnant has been detected, and it would be incredibly obvious if it existed (the Crab nebula is 1000 years old and more than 6000 light years way, for example, and is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the sky).

GaaAAAAh brain dead science reporting. The Crab Nebula is 7500 years old. It was detected 1000 years ago.

If it's 1000 years old and 6000 light years away, we wouldn't be able to see it for another 5000 years.

Depends on your frame of reference. :v

Another way to think about things: "Now" is what we are observing. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, so it's impossible for anything (gravity, etc) to impact anything beyond its light-cone, therefore it's not really correct to think of something happening "now" 1000 light years away to be observed 1000 years from now - it could also easily be argued that, from the perspective of observation and interactivity, "now" of something 1000 ly away is what we're observing to have occurred "1000 years ago."

This is likely what the article writer was attempting to describe.

Also, I'm terrible at explaining these sort of things, so that likely made very little sense.

That's a big deal. The paper does agree that the rules of astrophysics may need some adjusting to fit this, to avoid relying on a ≤2.6σ event to explain it.one would have to conclude that there are more (fainter) short GRBs than observed so far, and/or that there is another astrophysical population contributing to short GRBs, which was not yet fully recognized.

Is it possible to determine where the Earth was in relation to it's location in the solar system and be able to determine the direction this burst supposedly came from? Then they could scan that area and see if the could actually detect anything.